


Damsel, Distressing

by half_sleeping



Category: Dresden Files - Jim Butcher
Genre: Divergent AU, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-22
Updated: 2012-12-22
Packaged: 2017-11-22 00:25:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/603755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/half_sleeping/pseuds/half_sleeping
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Look, I won't lie to you. Shooting Morgan in the head? Felt pretty damn good to me.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Damsel, Distressing

**Author's Note:**

> Seven scenes from the world in which the Corpsetaker took Morgan instead of Luccio.

vi.

Afterwards, I lay dreamily on the cot staring up at the ceiling, trying not to remember anything. I wasn’t very good at it, but I liked to pretend. The drugs helped. But I don't think anything could have suppressed the sight of Morgan's grief-wracked face as he bent over Captain Luccio’s fallen body, with Wizard Peabody’s corpse just a few feet away. Morgan’s hair had gotten a little long in the front, and the dark strands of it fell into darker eyes as slim hands touched his old master’s face and clenched into the still blood-soaked material of her shirt, his own useless leg sprawled out behind him. Morgan had become much more of a looker since the Corpsetaker had stuck him in that body, but I couldn’t imagine what he must have been feeling at that moment. Well, I could. I’d certainly heard enough bitter diatribes from him over being depowered and deaged and suddenly locked into the body of a young woman to piece together what he might have been feeling. And then multiply it by about a gajillion as he held onto the cooling body of the woman he loved, his teacher and his comrade, his Captain and his friend.

Fuck. Fuck. I hadn’t been able to clear Anastasia Luccio’s name. And she’d gone knowing that this was the best we could do. We’d lost a good solider today. An amazing woman. And I’d lost-

Listens-To-Wind loomed out of the darkness and, after making sure we were private, explained some things to me. I explained some things to him. I don’t know why I only ever get around to these vital moments of information-sharing long after the action’s over. You’d think they’d be a lot more helpful during or before-hand.

Listens-To-Wind listened to me gravely.

"So that's it.” I said. "Morgan. They got to Morgan. That's what happened."

"Warden Morgan does appear to have sustained considerable psychic damage," said Listens-To-Wind. "Judging from recent events and developing events over the past few years, I believe we can conclude that Morgan was meant to target you. And anyone else he could have been manipulated into targeting, of course. Warden Morgan would have been a valuable asset."

Yeah, like making Morgan think the world was full of evil wizards out to get him was difficult. “So, what,” I said. “They sent Morgan as an undercover operative? Because it was easier to infiltrate him now?”

Listens-To-Wind's face was suddenly lit by a spark of humor. "I believe the commonly applied term," he said, "is honey trap."

I couldn't help it. I started to laugh too. "Me and Morgan," I said, between helpless- all right, I admit it- giggles. "Morgan and me. Morgan and-" my ribs hurt too much for me to laugh this hard, but I didn't care. Laughing felt good. 

"Yes," said Listens-to-Wind, "that line of inquiry apparently ended fruitlessly. There would have been too much conflict with Warden Morgan's natural personality and drives- and such a change would certainly have aroused considerable suspicion."

"But it was enough that Morgan became my friend," I said. I think that was the first time I ever called him that, even to myself. Donald Morgan. My friend. My psychically twisted-around to like me friend. 

"Your friend," agreed Listens-To-Wind. He sat quietly and let me think. He’s good at that sort of thing.

Donald Morgan had become my friend. We’d fought side-by-side on regional warden business more than once. He’d been so offended by my swordsmanship he’d spent some time forcing me to fight with my brand-new Warden’s blade, and then only sometimes bought the beer afterward. Murphy and Molly had decided he was a poor baby, which was more than I’d ever gotten, gripe gripe. Now and then he’d shown me a new trick or two, and Molly, too, while checking in to make sure I hadn’t corrupted her or she corrupted me into a warlock in the course of the last month. He’d changed marginally from the bogeyman who’d haunted my life into my comrade. My friend. An annoying pain-in-the-ass stick in the mud fanatic, maybe, but my friends say worse things about me all the time. And I- I’d maybe thought that something had changed about me. That maybe if Morgan was around, had warmed up to me, it meant that I'd made good, somehow. That I'd come back from being that person who-

Dark magic stains a person who uses it. Permanently. It’s why Morgan is so crazy fanatical and why the White Council sits behind him the way they do. It’s why I ride herd on Molly the way I do. Why I keep looking at myself and wondering. Waiting.

If Morgan, Mr. Never Forget himself, was willing to forgive me, then maybe it had meant that I was worth forgiving. I should have known. Nothing short of a full-blown personality transplant could have gotten Morgan to tolerate me. Nothing short of Black Magic could have made him forget that I was what I was. And Molly, wow. I couldn't imagine what it had taken to get him to warm up to Molly. I mean, the guy had once been willing to chop off her head for doing to other people what had been done to him.

That kind of thing’s got to mess someone up.

 

v.

I cried uncle for the third or fifteenth time- I’m not ashamed to admit when I’m overmatched- and Morgan went off to do stretches and more sword exercises while I crawled feebly to Murphy and made eyes at her until she cracked the water bottle for me to drink from. I didn’t think I possessed the muscle strength to do it myself. 

“You’re a wuss,” she said. “I thought you’d been brushing up on this stuff.”

“Take two hours with Warden Morgan,” I said. “Being shouted at and poked and prodded and beaten black and blue. After a few hours of dedicated spell-casting. Go on. I’ll watch.”

 She snorted. “He was at the aikido practice earlier,” she said. He would have been. Morgan liked anything where you got to beat people up. “You guys need a better place than this to practice your swordfighting, you know. I think the guys saw you people filing in and me kicking the rest of them out and came to the conclusion I was shooting a porno to make ends meet.”

“I’ve been on a porno set,” I said. “If this is one, it’s one hell of a shoddy operation. I don’t even get a fluffer.”

“You’re a pig, Harry,” said Murphy pleasantly. She watched Morgan bending over Molly’s homework while Molly tried her very best sad eyes at him to make him go away and stop torturing her. Morgan’s hair was growing out again, sweat-soaked and dark, and the even more sweat-soaked exercise clothes clung to the strong lean lines of his curves, muscles moving in his forearms. Morgan had put on muscle, but his new body was just never going to hold the same amount as his old one- or the same capacity for magic. I still wasn’t sure which he hated more. He’d thrown himself into building up his strength in both areas in the hope of being allowed back into hard combat on the front lines, rather than being stuck covering the US with me and Carlos and running the warden training camps. This was where I and Molly came in. His ‘training’ with us also let him keep an eye on whether either of us were going warlock, a thing I would probably have resented a lot more if he hadn’t been one, clearly desperate to keep from going stir-crazy, and two, in a really really hot woman’s body.

What? So I’m shallow. And I can never turn down a damsel in distress. Plus, Morgan had some of the best war-stories and knew all the little tricks of combat wizardry. Of fighting. It couldn’t hurt to learn. I could learn.

“Molly seems to be getting on,” said Murphy. “Morgan and her are taking to each other like ducks.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Poor kid. She’s had her brains scrambled.”

“Older, crusty, full of neat tricks, occasionally threatens her with hideous violence, coddles and pets her otherwise, violently morally intractable, and way too fond of posing so the warden’s cloak blows dramatically back from your shoulders?” said Murphy. “Yeah, big stretch.”

I looked at Murphy. My mouth worked, but nothing came out. Nothing was there _to_ come out.

Murphy arched an eyebrow at me. “Oh, were we not doing that bit?” she said. “Come on, Harry. You can’t say you don’t see it.”

“I don’t see it,” I said, immediately.

Murphy snorted at me, which, granted is her usual reaction, but not one I felt was justified. “Strike first, ask questions later,” she said. “I don’t have many rules in my life but the few I have I stick to. Fuck all you people very much, except the bare handful I tolerate. None of this sounding familiar?”

I looked at Molly’s lazy, laughing eyes, tipped up to Morgan, who was usually shorter than her, but now bent over her work with a concentrated scowl- different from his grumpy scowl, his angry scowl, and his ‘this-is-my-walking-around-face’ scowl. I’d seen Captain Luccio pinch his cheek once mid-terrible-expression, and coo at him with a laugh lighting up her careworn face. I’d seen that look he’d given her at that moment before- wondering, daring, _hoping_. And knowing it wasn’t ever going to happen.

Nothing was ever going to happen.

iv.

When Morgan opened the door to the Carpenters’ laundry room, I couldn’t help it. I screamed like a girl and nearly fell over.

“Shut it, Dresden,” he said. “The Archive has been taken. Taken while under the protection of the White Council and held by practioners of Black Magic.”

I stared at him. “You know you can just say ‘I’ll help save the little girl’,” I said. “No one would hold it against you if you decided to go gunning for the earthly embodiments of semi-divine fear, evil and destruction instead of chopping the heads off vampires or warlocks. I promise not to judge you in the morning.” Man, leave it to Morgan to turn a simple escort mission and looking bored while I got chewed to pieces into a huge drama moment. I was the main wizard around here, dammit. Huge dramatic moments and complicated self-justifications were _my bit_.

Morgan sneered at me, magnificently. “I’ve looked up the concentrations of leylines in the area,” he said. “Dresden? Are you coming?”

 

iii.

“Where did you go?” I said, once Morgan had marched in to grab his more armed and dangerous things- which I hadn’t touched, courtesy of the warning-spell he’d left on them- and Molly had waltzed in, looking tolerably tired from her afternoon shopping but ready to check in on the work she’d left here this morning. I’d drive her back to her folks’ place, later. I’d have done it before, but I’d wanted to get some things done with Bob, whom I still wasn’t letting either of them know about.

Molly held up a shopping bag. On this side was the logo of a mid-price lingerie store, which I know because I am a private investigator who was required to know this kind of thing, and not because I keep track of anything like that for other reasons like desperately wanting to have someone in my life whom I could buy presents like that. Money to buy them with. Things like that. Morgan was carrying a similar bag. Bags, and looked nonplussed at them. Then he lifted his cute face, and glared at me as he stalked off towards however it was Morgan got to and from Chicago. A Way, probably.

My face convulsed into a rictus of combined hilarity and horror, the desire to scrub my eyeballs only matched by my conviction that if I burst out laughing, there would be no trace of me or mine left on this good earth.

And then everyone would tell me I’d deserved it.

Molly was smirking evilly. I levelled my best icy Master Wizard glare at her. “I hope you had a- productive evening,” I said.

“Yeah,” my apprentice said, glinting a little, though that might just have been her piercings. Or her evil tendencies, which came from no one I could possibly imagine. “Very productive. I don’t think the last time Morgan saw women’s underthings they’d invented waterbras.”

Unable to summon words to adequately express my horror and distaste, I clapped my hand over my ears and tackled my way back into my apartment. Molly followed me still smirking.

 

ii.

I used my height to loom over Morgan and block his progress. This made me a really bad person, but Morgan was just as capable of blasting my head off my shoulders as he had been pre-bodyswap, and there’s a certain cachet to just being _bigger_ than your great fears. Equal to them. Also, I knew for a fact that Morgan was considerably better with that sword than I would ever be.

“You know that Molly isn’t going to go warlock in between the seconds you blink while watching her,” I said. “You’re not going to threaten her into using dark magic, Morgan. It didn’t work with me. I promise if you have to wait a week to chop off our heads after we use dark magic, the heads will still come off.”

Morgan glanced up at me sourly. To compensate for having to look up to talk to me, most people who don’t like me talk to a spot above my left shoulder. This cuts down on the chances of soulgaze, and is therefore A-OK with me. “Warlock isn’t a moment, Dresden. It’s a slope.” His voice didn’t quite reach his old registers, but it made a damn fine effort. “Evil isn’t one mistake, despite what you seem to think I think,” he said, voice heavy. “You always think to yourself, there’s a point at which this will stop. If I stop at that point, I can still turn back. And the point keeps changing.”

I blinked.

“I have often thought,” said Morgan, each word struggling from his mouth. “That perhaps DuMorne would not have- that you would not- if he had not had the- leeway which came from being-“

“A warden?” I said.

Morgan’s face twisted. “Yes,” he said. “He enjoyed a certain freedom-“

“The freedom to cherrypick magically talented kids and train them into his own personal enforcers?” I said. I just about mentioned Elaine, but then remembered why this would have been a terrible idea.

“Yes,” said Morgan.

“Did you just accuse me of being Justin?” I said. I would have gotten angrier, but I think Morgan vacillating dangerously close to admitting I wasn’t evil incarnate was taking up all my four brain cells dedicated to emotions with brain-numbing shock.

“I’m saying you deserve the… _chance_ not to be,” said Morgan, gritting his teeth. “You took on the Doom for her sake. Fine. But if she is truly repentant-“

“Which she is,” I said.

“-then she has to have the chance to prove it,” he said. “You have a vested interest in reporting her progress as on an upward trajectory. But the mere presence- my involvement-“

I listened to Morgan grunt-stammer his way around it for a few more sentence fragments before I said, “No.”

His eyes narrowed.

“I said no,” I said. “I may have to work with you,” as Morgan had been returned to regional command in Chicago, covering Ramirez’s beat while he was off fighting the war against the Red Court, after being removed from the non-combat parts of training camp for reasons of being Morgan. “But I don’t have to take you sticking your suspicious bitter nose into every aspect of my life. I haven’t in eight years. Hell’s bells, Morgan. I’ve saved your life. You’ve saved mine. I don’t like you, you don’t like me, fine. But I won’t have you hounding Molly the way you hounded me. You have to take my word for it she’s not going warlock? You get to take my head if she does. But until then we don’t have to take this from you.” I leaned back and crossed my arms. It felt good to have the moral high ground on Morgan, but there’s a lot of that when your opponent is a fanatical child-executioner.

Morgan said, “I’ll teach her.”

“What?” I said.

“I’ll teach her,” he said, and looked resigned. “And you. You’re a combat wizard. You’re new to being a Warden. There are things I could teach you both. You don’t have to take it from me. You’re right. But you said-“ he made a face. It scrunched up his cute dimpled face. “You said that we should be helping her. That we should be helping these children. If she can turn away, I would- help. We can help her.”

Morgan could stamp the ground asunder. Moral high ground be _damned_ , I was going to milk him for all he was worth. And I can't ever turn down a lady.

 

vi(i).

I sat on my couch and nursed a beer. Mister was out, and Mouse sleeping over by the fire, quiet and tired. It was always like this after a case of mine. 

(I wondered if the disgraced captain of the wardens got a funeral. A nice funeral, stately and elegant, people saying nice things about all the things she’d done for them. What she’d died for. Probably not.)

There was a heavy thumping on the door, like someone had taken a ram to it or something. I became genuinely afraid whoever it was would activate the wards and then I would have to clean up the mess, so I hobbled as quickly as I could to open it. Mouse stood, but did not growl.

I opened the door and stared. Morgan stood there, hair chopped short around his head, back military-straight. He was casually-armed, at least for him. I.... hadn't expected this. Him. 

Pretty, yeah, but dangerous. Angry. Crackling with it.

(I blinked at her. Er, him. Morgan was still a guy in there, and apparently that was the terminology. The last time I’d seen him, he’d been standing over Molly with his sword at the ready, ready to take her life for his beliefs, and would have done it whether or not she was innocent. Whether I was innocent. I wondered if they’d managed to call a referendum in the last week or so since the council meeting, and the Doom had fallen upon us both. I wondered if Molly was already gone. I wondered how the hell it was Morgan had lost half his size but still looked like he could take me without blinking. I wondered why the hell he was here.)

“Dresden,” said Morgan, making my name sound like _motherfucker_. It’s been done more often than you’d think. “Let me in. I want to talk to you.”

What the hell. I let him into my apartment. 


End file.
